Blended fruit smoothies, milkshakes and protein shakes are becoming increasingly popular among health conscious people. In these blended drinks, fresh fruits and/or vegetables can be mixed together with, if desired, vitamins and protein supplements to provide fresh nutritious foods in a convenient, portable form.
While it is advantageous to blend carefully selected ingredients at the peak of their freshness, it is often not practical to do so. To have fresh fruits and vegetables available every day, for example, one may need to frequently go shopping for such fruits/vegetables, give the fruits/vegetables time to ripen and then make sure that the fruits/vegetables do not over ripen. Moreover, working with fresh fruits and vegetables usually generates organic wastes, is often messy and inevitably requires clean up. This means a lot of time and attention.
In a fast moving society, there is a demand for a fresh, nutritious blended drink that can be selected and prepared quickly. Better yet, such a fresh, blended drink should be available at a place that can be easily accessed, such as a convenience store, restaurant or one's home.
F'Real Foods, LLC, a subsidiary of Rich Products Corporation, has made a business of making fresh, nutritious smoothies and milkshakes available at easily accessible locations, such as convenience stores. F'Real Foods starts with fresh ingredients, such as fresh fruits and milk, which it pre-blends into smoothies and milkshakes. The pre-blended smoothies and milkshakes are then hard frozen in sealed cups before they are shipped to convenience stores at many different locations. The frozen pre-blended smoothies and milkshakes are then stored in a freezer at the convenience store next to a commercial size blending machine. When the convenience store consumer wants a fresh smoothie or milkshake, the consumer simply selects the desired frozen, pre-blended smoothie or milkshake from the convenience store freezer, tears the seal off the top of the smoothie/milkshake cup and then places the smoothie/milkshake cup in a cupholder built into the blending machine. The consumer can then start the blending machine to blend the frozen smoothie/milkshake to a desired consistency.
F'Real Foods, LLC has numerous U.S. patents and U.S. published patent applications covering its blending machines and processes for preparing smoothies/milkshakes, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,803,377; 5,962,060; 6,041,961; 6,326,047; 6,474,862; 6,465,034; 6,527,207; 7,144,150; 7,520,658; 7,520,662; 8,336,731; 8,735,515 and 8,902,626 as well as U.S. Published Patent Application Nos. 2011/0088568; 2013/0341446; 2013/0344220; 2013/0341439 and 2013/0344221.
For its convenience store market, F'Real has built and supplied heavy duty, stainless steel commercial size blenders that can withstand rugged use by convenience store customers while requiring very little maintenance. These heavy duty blenders are typically attached to a municipal water supply so that they have a generous supply of water for blending, cleaning and automatic sanitizing. After a milkshake or smoothie is blended and removed by the customer, the food preparation chamber in the F'Real commercial size blender is sprayed with water, preferably heated water, to wash away any food residue and kill bacteria.
The popularity of F'Real Foods, LLC's convenience store smoothies and milkshakes has led to a demand to make the same sort of smoothies and milkshakes available for use in other settings, such as a home or restaurant. In these other settings, a commercial size blender may be too expensive or dedicated access to a municipal water supply may not be available for the blender. In those instances, it would still be important to prepare the smoothies and milkshakes quickly and in a sanitary manner, but it would need to be done with a simpler machine that could be purchased for a lower price.